


Carry Your Heart

by Zai42



Series: Gore/Kinktober Prompts [12]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Death, Monsters, Other, Rebirth, Religious Conflict, Rituals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-12
Updated: 2018-10-12
Packaged: 2019-07-29 11:33:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16263356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zai42/pseuds/Zai42
Summary: The Watcher's Crown happens, in the end, in spite of everything. But not without a hitch.Prompt: Betrayed





	Carry Your Heart

There was rapture in Elias' eyes - in all of them. Martin was curled on the stone floor behind him, moaning like a wounded animal as bloodied tears tracked down his face - a complication, to be sure, but one that had been easily solved, even if it had made Jon's struggling worse. And before him - before him stood his Archivist, terrible and resplendent, impossible in every way. What was left of its human cocoon lay blind and insensate on the altar, and the Archivist, if it could be said to do such a thing, stared at it.

  
"You're beautiful," Elias whispered. He stepped forward reverently, legs shaking with the absurd desire to throw himself to his knees. "I've waited - I've waited so _long..."_

  
The Archivist did not turn to face him - it had _always_ been facing him, it could turn away from nothing, its Eye All-Seeing and All-Knowing - and spoke in a low, velvet tone that sounded so much like Jon that Elias wanted to laugh. "Magnus."

  
"Yes," Elias said. Tears slipped hot down his face and he made no motion to brush them away. "You - "

  
And suddenly there was blood.

  
He watched - of course he watched - as the Archivist so slowly, so carefully, sank a facsimile of a hand into his chest. It lacked the warped grace that the Flesh would have had, and instead of parting like clay, bone crunched and muscles ripped - but his heart was cradled delicately, the Archivist guiding it out of his body cavity with both hands, arteries and connective tissue snapping like overstressed ropes. It beat against the Archivist's palms and Elias watched it, mouth working wordlessly, generations of devotion warring with stunned, confused anguish.

  
The Archivist turned away, and he crumpled.

  
Martin was not aware of this. Martin was aware of very little, in fact, other than that he was dying. He felt it in every screaming cell of his body, in every panicking synapse - he knew he was dying and he knew Elias had made him feel it down to a molecular level and he knew Jon had been screaming but now he wasn't anymore, so maybe the dying wasn't such an awful fate after all.

  
The thing that stroked down his face and neck was not quite a hand. The Archivist pulled the knowledge of _surgery_ from a thousand thousand minds and used that as a guideline to make its incision, cleaner than Elias had gotten. Martin still screamed, weak and wet, and the syllables of it sounded like _Jon._

  
The Archivist held two hearts, and fitted the beating one into Martin's chest before sealing him up. It kept the still heart, pulled it into itself and devoured it, to keep it always, as was its nature. Then it sat motionless and waited, watching as Martin clung to it, sobbing, and struggled his way back to life. He sucked in a heaving breath and howled wordlessly, fury and agony in every breaking note of it. "It isn't _fair!"_ he shrieked, and his hands came up to clutch at where his chest had just been split open. "I - I did everything I was meant to! This wasn't supposed to _go like this!"_

  
The Archivist's head tilted slowly to one side. "Martin," it said.

  
"Yes, but - no - what have you _done_ to me?" Martin asked, and finally opened his eyes - all of them - turning to face the altar, and what still lay upon it. "Oh, _god."_ (The Archivist snorted derisively.) Martin wrenched his gaze from what remained of the human parts of Jonathan Sims, turning instead towards Elias, mangled nearly to the point of being unrecognizable. "I - that's - "

  
"No," said the Archivist, and tilted Martin's face towards it, away from the bodies lying still and accusatory in the dim light. "Not you. And not me." It bent towards him, the movement strange and untraceable, and Martin shuddered but did not - could not - would not - look away. "My Watcher," the Archivist said like a sigh, and Martin ached, euphoric and horrified. He did not want to kneel.

  
"My Archivist," he whispered, and the world around them shifted.

**Author's Note:**

> Me: One day I'll write Jon/Martin instead of weird crackships  
> Also me: Oh dear


End file.
